What’s New In Minecraft 1.13 Survival

Minecraft 1.13, aka The Update Aquatic, is an update to the Java edition of the game. The update has a planned release of 2018. This page is intended as a quick and handy cheat sheet for what’s new to the survival side of the game. A more detailed guide to every single change, from server to command level is available at Gamepedia.

The Update Aquatic

The name of the Minecraft 1.13 tells you all you need to know about the headline items in this release; the bulk of this major update revolves around the previously lifeless oceans. And wow, what a raft of additions the game now has! Sidetone, that name is a riff on the movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Biomes

Where once there was merely regular and deep oceans, as of 1.13 oceans come in frozen, cold, normal, lukewarm and warm varieties. Underwater, each ocean biome has a slightly different coloration, e.g. warmer, lighter, brighter tones in warmer tropical waters. Moreover, each can also generate as a regular or deep variant. In these oceans, caves and ravines now generate, often right down to lava level exposing diamond ore! The temperature of the ocean biomes dictates what might spawn.

The warmer ocean biome floors also now have a much prettier sand bottom too. No more endless miles of gravel! Finally you’ll find gently swaying kelp through all the ocean biomes, making for far more interesting water biomes. Extra bonus: ravines will also now course through deserts and mesa biomes as well.

Areas of Icebergs can now generate in colder waters and with the rewriting of the terrain generation system there have also been reputed improvements to how biome temperatures blend; players should find less instances of incongruous blends, e.g. a Jungle that connects directly to an Ice biome.

Sea Pickles

Sea pickles generate in warmer water and generate light. They can be placed on land too. Sea pickles can be placed up to four times on a block, with each pickle placed adding three to the block light level.

Sea Grass and Kelp

Kelp can be found underwater and grows several blocks tall; it can also be placed in survival but only underwater. Kelp can be smelted in a furnace into dry kelp.
Can be smelted into dry kelp. Dry kelp can be eaten restoring a half hunger point.

Seagrass similarly generates underwater, and like kelp, sways in the ocean currents. Seagrass can also be generated by using bone meal on underwater blocks – just like generating normal grass on the overworld.

Minecraft 1.13 seagrass and kelp

Shipwrecks

Different variants of Shipwrecks now spawn in oceans. Shipwrecks have a chest with loot. Shipwrecks can spawn in the oddest of places – between underwater caverns, lodged into the side of ocean monuments, even above water in some rare cases. They can spawn in various orientations too, from on their sides through to upside down.

Underwater Ruins

Found in every biome are ruined Underwater Ruins. They come in many different shapes and sizes regardless of depth. They can generate as single structures or bigger, complex ruined villages. Ruins also contain treasure chests to discover.

Under water ruin in Mincraft 113

Mobs

Dolphins

These friendly and fun passive mobs will spawn in all non-frozen biomes. They love to play with floating items and chase players in passing boats. They are neutral unless attacked at which point they will mob attack like Pigmen. If killed (why would you do that!) they drop cod. Dolphins can also give the player the Dolphin’s Grace status effect when players swim nearby – increasing the players swimming speed. Dolphins will also help players locate treasure. Players just need to feed Dolphins raw cod and they will swim to the nearest shipwreck or underwater ruins

Minecraft 1.13 dolphins

Fish

Regular fish have been renamed to cod. As well as cod you will find salmon, squid and pufferfish happily swimming along in the ocean depths. Fish can be caught in buckets but use caution when approaching pufferfish; which will bloat up and poison careless nearby players or hostile mobs; this causes 7 points of damage.

Turtles

To much fanfare turtles are now part of Minecraft in version 1.13. Turtles are water based mobs that spawn on warm beaches; you will find these in the savannah, mesa, swamp, plain, jungle and desert biomes. Turtles spawn in groups and will also lay eggs on the beach they first spawn upon (which in turn hatch baby turtles). When killed, turtles drop sea grass, which can also be used to breed adult turtles too.

The Drowned

Also new in Minecraft 1.13 this new Zombie variant that you’ll find underwater. The Drowned can sometimes spawn with the new Trident weapon, and will hurl this at players both underwater, and those close by on land too, if within range. Normal Zombies that go underwater will turn into The Drowned as well after a period of time. The Drowned will attack turtles, come in baby variants and also attempt to come on land at night after players.

Phantom

The Phantom is a new flying mob that spawns in the overworld when a player has not slept for three days or more. Then can also spawn in night time thunderstorms too. Phantoms spawn in packs of 1-4, increasingly so if the player has not slept for increasing amounts of time.

Once spawned the Phantom will begin swooping down at the player and attacking. Phantoms count as an undead mob and as such burn in daylight and are also harmed by the by the Instant Health potions and healed by the Instant Damage potion.

When killed Phantoms drop up to one phantom membrane, see below for more info on this new item in 1.13.

Blocks

Coral blocks

Coral blocks spawn Coral Reefs in warmer water biomes and need to be in contact with water to stay alive. Coral Reefs can spawn in a variety of sizes from small to extremely large. The light you see in the reefs below is generated by Sea Pickles:

Large Coral Reef without Night Vision effect in Minecraft 1.13Exanple of large Coral Reef in Minecraft 1.13 with Night Vision effectCoral Reef in Minecraft 1.13

If removed from the water they’ll turn to a kinda of calcified grey block as shown below.

Live and dead corals in Minecraft 1.13

Additionally Coral Fans are five new blocks that can be placed underwater, and likewise if placed out of water they will die.

Kelp blocks

Nine pieces of dry kelp (in a 3×3 crafting grid) can be used to craft kelp block. These can be used as compact storage or decorative blocks.

Kelp blocks in Minecraft 1.13

Blue Ice

A new opaque Ice variant can be seen in the image below. Blue Ice is the top layer, followed by Packed Ice (middle layer) and regular Ice (bottom layer)

Minecraft 1.13 Blue Ice, Packed Ice, Ice

Blue Ice can also be crafted by the player using 9 Packed Ice blocks in a 3×3 pattern as below. Nine packed Ice produces just one Blue Ice. For reference Blue Ice can’t be unpacked back into Packed Ice:

Crafting Blue Ice in Minecraft 1.13

Stripped logs

This new wood block should be a huge help for builders. The stripped wood block comes in all six wood variants and has three textures depending on placement. The block can be tiled both horizontally and vertically plus has an end texture too. Stripped logs are obtainable by right clicking on wooden logs or bank blocks with an axe.

Stripped logs new to Minecraft 1.13

Craftable bark blocks

Ostensibly the same as a wood log block but with the texture on all six sides. Bark blocks are craftable by using four logs in a 2×2 grid. Four logs yields three bark blocks.

Bark blocks in Minecraft 1.13Crafting bark blocks in Minecraft 1.13

Craftable packed ice

The final release version of Minecraft 1.13 will allow players to craft Packed Ice by using nine blocks of regular Ice (3×3 crafting pattern). This means you no longer have to tear down those majestic Ice Spikes and Icebergs – Packed Ice is now be a farmable, renewable resource!

Buttons, trapdoors and pressure plates

These three items are all available in every wood variant. The crafting recipes remain the same, except of course requiring the use of the specific wood variant:

General gameplay and other items

Bubbles and Water Columns

Columns of water will generate in water above Magma Bocks or Soul Sand. There must be two blocks of water above the respective block to generate the Water Column. Each block creates a column with a different effect. Magma block columns pull entities down to the bottom of the column and also sink unlucky boats. Soul sand works in reverse and pushes any items up the column to the surface.columns push entities up.

These two new mechanics are expected to make huge improvements to vertical item transpiration in Minecraft 1.13. Redstone devices to moved items – that can be buggy on certain SMP servers should be a thing of the past. Item transportation can now be handled with just vanilla game mechanics, with low lag as well.

Chest placement restrictions removed

The long standing restrictions on chest placement have now been removed. No longer do you need to alternate between regular and trapped chests to place chests alongside each other. As of 1.13 users can now place regular chests side by side in any way they like.

Mincraft 1.13 – chest fixes

Watery mechanics

When a player leaves water, they no longer instantly receive full oxygen levels. It now take sa few seconds out in the open air to recover from spending time underwater.

Heart Of The Sea

No current info, but see Conduit section below.

Nautilus Shell

No current info, but see Conduit section below.

Conduits

This new item is drafted using eight Nautilus Shells surrounding one Heart Of The Sea. When a Conduit is surrounded by a minimum of 16 Prismarine blocks a new Conduit Power effect is given to nearby players. This adds a haste like effect, night vision and unlimited water breathing. The more Prismarine that surrounds the Conduit the larger the Conduit Power range upto a maximum range of 96 blocks. Note: the Conduit must be immediately surrounded by water and not directly touching any other block.

Minecraft 1.13 – nautilus shell and heart of sea to make conduitActivated Conduit in Minecraft 1.13

Phantom Membrane

This new item is dropped by the Phantom and is used to repair Elytra. Players can no longer use leather to repair a damaged Elytra. The Phantom Membrane can also be used to craft a potion of Slow Falling which does what it says on the tin.